How to Start a Shopify Store in Canada (Step-by-Step)

A Shopify store in Canada is your own checkout for a product you can describe, price in dollars, and deliver, whether that product is a physical item you ship or a digital file the buyer downloads. A Shopify store suits people who can photograph or explain one offer, answer a customer, and pay a monthly plan while sales are still uncertain.

The store is a cost until an order arrives. Marketplace listings without your own subscription are a smaller test, covered in reselling on Canadian marketplaces. A single downloadable workflow can also start as a Notion template before it needs a full store. Open Shopify when you want the catalogue, the domain, and the payment flow in one place, and you have read the current price.

Fact	Detail for a Shopify store in Canada
Useful first catalogue	One product, or a tight set, that you can ship or deliver
Plan price	Basic is $49 CAD a month, or $37 CAD a month billed yearly, on Shopify’s Canada pricing page. Confirm it
Card rate	Online standard card rates from 2.8% + 30¢ CAD on Basic, on that same page
Imports	Goods you import to sell follow the CBSA commercial import guide
GST/HST	Small-supplier threshold of $30,000, plus extra platform rules for some digital sales. When to register

Who does a Shopify store in Canada suit?

A Shopify store in Canada suits people who already know the product, because they make it, already sell it locally, or can support a digital file they use themselves. A store is a poor fit if the product is “something trending,” if you cannot describe delivery times, or if a monthly subscription would hurt before the first order.

Selling from Canada to Canadians means shipping, taxes, and support in this country. Selling abroad adds duties the buyer may not expect. Start with a delivery promise you can keep inside Canada. Add other countries when you have shipped the simple version without drama.

Dropshipping from a supplier you have never tested is a common pitch and a common way to miss a delivery date. This guide does not treat an unseen supplier as a starter plan. If you import stock to resell, use the commercial import path, not a personal shopping story.

What does a Shopify store cost in Canada?

The fuller lean, typical, and post-intro budget, including a labelled break-even sketch, is in Shopify store startup costs. Shopify’s Canada pricing page is the source for plan prices. It changes, including introductory offers. As published on that page, Basic is $49 CAD a month, or $37 CAD a month if you pay yearly. Grow is $132 CAD a month, or $99 CAD a month yearly. Advanced is $517 CAD a month, or $389 CAD a month yearly. The page also describes a 3-day trial and then $1 a month for 3 months on many plans, after which standard pricing applies. Online standard card rates on Basic are 2.8% + 30¢ CAD. Third-party payment providers add a separate transaction fee, 2% on Basic on that page. There is no setup fee on the plans described there. Confirm every figure before you subscribe. The $1 offer is not the ongoing cost.

The supply ranges below are typical Canadian retail prices to verify locally. They are not quotes.

Item	Typical CAD range	How to think about it
Shopify Basic, yearly price	$37 CAD a month on the pricing page	Use yearly only if you will still want the store in month four. The intro offer is temporary.
Domain	Confirm the registrar	Shopify says you can connect a domain you own. The price is not in this guide.
Product photos	$0 if you photograph in daylight	A phone photo of the real item beats a borrowed lifestyle image.
Mailers and tape, if you ship	$8–$25 to start	A few packages. A pallet of boxes waits for repeat orders.
Sample of the product	The real cost	Order one to yourself if you do not make it. Time the delivery.
Packing time	Your hours	Write it down. It is part of the margin.
Returns buffer	Cash you do not spend	A refund still costs the outgoing ship.

The plan is the decision. Shopify TODO-AFFILIATE is the checkout this guide is about, and the pricing link above is the page to read before the trial ends. Do not add paid apps in week one. The core editor is enough to list one product.

If you ship, a small pack of shipping supplies TODO-AFFILIATE covers the first orders. Buy more when the first ten shipments have a pattern.

Payouts and the subscription should not share a foggy balance with rent. KOHO TODO-AFFILIATE is one Canadian account that can hold store payouts until fees, refunds, and any tax set-aside are clear.

How much can a Shopify store earn in Canada?

Shopify store earnings in Canada cannot be promised as a monthly profit, because a digital file and a shipped good have different costs, and a new store can sell nothing. What you keep depends on the list below, and this guide does not publish an average store profit.

• The plan price you are actually on, after any intro offer ends
• Card fees from the pricing page for your plan
• What the product cost you, including a sample and a mailer
• Refunds and the shipping you do not get back
• Ads, if you run them, which can exceed sales
• Time to pack, answer email, and fix an address
• Duties and taxes if you import stock
• The week the supplier slips and you still owe the customer an answer

A store with one clear product is easier to learn than a catalogue of fifty. Profit is what remains after the plan, the card fee, the product, and the ship. Revenue on the dashboard is not that remainder.

What would an assumed Shopify month cost in Canada?

An assumed Shopify month in Canada, in the sketch below, uses Shopify’s published Basic yearly price and an assumed order this guide does not claim is typical. The sketch is not a quote, a forecast, or a survey.

Illustrative example. Suppose you are past the introductory months and you use Basic at the yearly rate on the pricing page, $37 for the month. Suppose one order arrives at an assumed $40 product price. Online standard card rates on Basic are 2.8% + 30¢ CAD, so 0.028 × $40 = $1.12, plus $0.30, which is $1.42. Suppose a mailer at $2. The sketch is $40 − $1.42 − $2 − $37 = −$0.42 before the cost of the product itself and before your time. One order does not cover the plan in this assumption. Suppose instead you sell a digital file with no mailer and ten orders at the same assumed $40: card fees are 10 × $1.42 = $14.20, and $400 − $14.20 − $37 = $348.80 before any other fee, refund, or the hours you spent. These totals are assumptions, not a quote, a forecast, or a typical result. Confirm the live card rate, because the pricing page can change.

How do you start a Shopify store in Canada?

Starting a Shopify store in Canada means choosing one product you can deliver, listing it with honest photos, and placing a test order before you advertise. The steps below are that sequence.

Step 1: Name the product and the buyer

One sentence: what it is, who it is for, and whether you ship it or they download it. If the sentence is “products that are trending,” you do not have a product yet. Make it, or sell something you already resell locally and understand.

Step 2: Prove you can deliver once

Ship a sample to yourself, or duplicate the digital file on a fresh account. Time it. If the sample is late or the file is confusing, fix that before the store has a customer.

Step 3: Read the pricing page and pick Basic unless you know why not

Basic is the plan for a first store on Shopify’s own comparison. Grow and Advanced add staff and features you may not need. Yearly pricing is cheaper per month and less flexible. The intro offer ends. Write the standard monthly or yearly figure into your sketch, not only the $1 month.

Step 4: List one product with real photos and a real policy

Price, what is included, ship-from location, and how a refund works. Claims about the product have to be true. The Competition Bureau’s page on false or misleading representations is the standard, not a slogan.

Step 5: Set shipping you can actually do

Name the regions you will ship to. A Canada-only promise is a valid start. If you import the goods to sell, follow the CBSA guide to importing commercial goods. Duties are part of your cost or the buyer’s, and you should know which before checkout.

Step 6: Place a test order and refund it

Use a real card if the platform requires it, and watch the payout timing. Pack the order as you would for a stranger. The test shows the fee and the holes in the instructions.

Step 7: Tell people who already know the product

Customers from a local listing, a class, or your own reselling buyers. Paid ads are optional and easy to overspend. A first week without ads is a cleaner test.

Step 8: Log every order

Price, card fee, shipping, product cost, and refund. The Shopify report helps. Your sheet is what you will use at tax time if you export nothing else.

Step 9: Review after ten orders or thirty days, whichever comes first

Keep the product if delivery was calm. Change the promise if you missed dates. Add a second product only when the first one’s support is boring. Cancel the plan if the log says you will not use it. Shopify’s pricing page says you can cancel.

What should the first week of a Shopify store in Canada include?

The first week of a Shopify store in Canada should produce one listed product, a test order, and a written standard plan price. It should not produce a large ad spend.

• Day 1: Write the product sentence. Confirm you can deliver it.
• Day 2: Read Shopify’s Canada pricing page. Write Basic’s standard price into a note, plus the intro offer’s end.
• Day 3: Photograph the real product. Draft the refund and shipping lines.
• Day 4: Open the store and list that one product. Skip extra apps.
• Day 5: Place a test order. Note the card fee and the packing steps.
• Day 6: Fix whatever the test showed. Tell a few people who already trust the product.
• Day 7: Log the result, including zero orders. Decide whether week two is more outreach or a pause.

What Shopify mistakes are common in Canada?

Common Shopify mistakes in Canada are subscribing before the product exists, ignoring the price after the intro months, and listing goods you have not held. The plan is cheap compared with a bad supplier and expensive compared with zero sales.

A catalogue of lookalike products with borrowed photos is hard to support and easy to misdescribe. One honest product is a store. Fifty mystery listings are a support queue.

Advertising on day one, before the test order, spends money to send people into a broken checkout. Fix the test. Then consider ads as a separate, capped experiment.

Forgetting duties on imported stock, or promising two-day delivery from a supplier in another country, creates refunds. Say the ship-from place and the window you have actually seen.

Which tax rules apply to a Shopify store in Canada?

Shopify store income in Canada is self-employment income, reported on Form T2125, Statement of Business or Professional Activities, and self-employed people pay the whole Canada Pension Plan contribution on the net. GST/HST on your taxable supplies follows the $30,000 small-supplier test, not the taxi and ride-sharing rule. Nova Scotia’s HST is 14% as of 1 April 2025 on the CRA charge and collect the GST/HST table, and Quebec charges GST and QST.

This is not tax, legal, or insurance advice.

Keep order exports, fee reports, and receipts for stock and postage. Report the store on Form T2125 with the T1. The small-supplier test is worldwide taxable supplies, yours and your associates’, of $30,000 or less in a single calendar quarter and over the last four consecutive calendar quarters. Add other side-hustle revenue to the same pot. Under that test, registration is usually optional. Over it, you register on the timetable on the CRA’s when-to-register page. A store is not ride-sharing, so the first-dollar rule on the taxi page does not apply unless you also carry passengers for a platform.

Once registered, charge the rate for the province where the supply is made. Some provinces use HST. Others add PST on top of GST. Confirm Quebec and every other province on the charge-and-collect table and with the GST/HST calculator (and rates), and set the tax aside. Shopify can calculate tax when you configure it. The configuration is not a legal opinion. Check the result against the CRA table.

Digital products, and platforms that sell to people in Canada, add complexity. The CRA’s digital-economy overview describes GST/HST rules, in effect since 1 July 2021, for certain non-resident suppliers and distribution platform operators. If your store sells downloads to Canadians, or a marketplace collects tax on a facilitated sale, read that overview. A platform collection line does not replace your small-supplier test or Quebec’s QST.

Importing goods to sell is a border question as well as a tax question. Use the CBSA commercial import guide before you assume a personal exemption covers inventory.

Which side hustles sit near a Shopify store in Canada?

A Shopify store in Canada sits next to simpler selling and to the help a store later needs. Reselling tests demand on Marketplace, Kijiji, eBay.ca, or Poshmark without a monthly plan. Notion templates are a digital file with a lighter checkout. Repeating tasks inside the store can become Zapier automation once the clicks are boring and frequent. A local service business that wants to be found in maps, rather than to ship a product, is local SEO. A one-page brochure with no cart is no-code web design. A design printed after the order, with no stack of blanks in your closet, is print-on-demand. A page that recommends someone else’s product, with the commission disclosed, is affiliate marketing. The first real order is the next job: how to make your first Shopify store sale in Canada.

What are the common questions?

Which sources support this guide?

The rules, rates, and platform requirements in this guide are checked against these primary sources. Retail price ranges are labelled as ranges to verify locally, and they are not quotes.

• When to register for and start charging the GST/HST — Canada Revenue Agency
• Charge and collect the GST/HST — Canada Revenue Agency
• GST/HST calculator (and rates) — Canada Revenue Agency
• Form T2125, Statement of Business or Professional Activities — Canada Revenue Agency
• Contributions to the Canada Pension Plan — Government of Canada
• GST/HST for taxi and ride-sharing drivers — Canada Revenue Agency
• Shopify pricing — Shopify Canada
• Guide to importing commercial goods into Canada — Canada Border Services Agency
• GST/HST for digital-economy businesses: Overview — Canada Revenue Agency
• False or misleading representations — Competition Bureau Canada